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What a difference a gauge makes.

My roommate and I both knit. I've been more adventurous than she in my knitting. I've made a lot of different things that she never attempted. She was content to knit scarves and blankets for the rest of her life. Until I introduced her to socks and fulled bags (also incorrectly referred to as felted bags).

We both made a fulled bag from the same pattern (the Booga bag). Same size needles. Same yarn. Fulled at the same time in the same washing machine for the same amount of time. You would think that everything being exactly the same at the time of fulling our bags would end up the same size. You'd be wrong.

Her bag ended up 10.5 inches by 4 inches by 12 inches. Mine ended up 8.5 inches by 6 inches by 10.25 inches. How is it possible that we could do everything the same and end up with such vast differences in our bags? She knits much more loosely than I do and therefore our gauges were very different.

What is gauge?

This was a question I had when I was a new knitter. I didn't really pay much attention to it until I wanted to knit my first fitted item, a baby sweater. I didn't want something small enough to fit a doll but I also didn't want something large enough to fit me. I had to figure out my gauge.

Gauge is defined by Merriam Webster as "the fineness of a knitted fabric expressed by the number of loops per unit width" (http://www.m-w.com/dictionary /gauge). More commonly it's expressed in stitches (sts) AND rows per inch.

Why do I care?

Well in the above example of a fulled bag it's not that important. I mean do you really care exactly how big your finished bag will be? Probably not. But you probably care how big your sweater, or sock, or hat, or glove will be. Items that need to be certain size when completed require a certain gauge when knitting.

If you're knitting a pattern that says you should have 10 sts & 13 rows per 4 inches and you're knitting it at 14 sts & 18 rows per 4 inches your finished product will be much smaller than you intended. Even if you're off 1 sts & 1 row per 4 inch square it could be a drastic change. For example on a sweater with a 36 inch bust circumference. If you're knitting the correct gauge you would cast on 90 stitches. If your knitting 11 sts & 14 rows per 4 inch square and you cast on 90 stitches your finished project bust measurement would be 32.75 inches. Just over 3 inches smaller than required. I don't know about you but I'm not comfortable when my clothes are 3 inches to tight.

So how do

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